


'Twixt Cup and Lip

by ljs



Category: Indiana Jones Series, Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-29 01:05:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5110793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometime in 1960, Professor Henry Jones Jr and his wife Marion pay a call on the Duke of Denver (he who had been Lord Peter WImsey) and his wife, the esteemed detective novelist Harriet Vane Wimsey. But trouble finds them, as trouble often does.</p>
<p>At least Marion and Harriet can count on Champagne afterwards.</p>
<p>(Post-<i>Crystal Skull</i>. References "Talboys," but is not necessarily canon-compliant.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Twixt Cup and Lip

“Harriet, heart of my heart. Must we have Champagne?” the Duke of Denver said plaintively.

His wife smiled at him. In the soft light of the American Bar at the Savoy it was affectionate and amused, that smile, Marion Ravenwood Jones thought. Harriet said, “You needn’t, Peter. I know your tastes.”

“Any Scotch going, instead?” Professor Henry Jones Jr said.

Marion gave him the same smile Harriet had given Peter. “You can, Indy. But I sure as hell am drinking this bubbly.”

“We deserve it,” Harriet said, and their smiles grew.

Their husbands -- both a little battered -- looked at each other, and not quite sighed, and raised their hands for the bartender.

TWO HOURS EARLIER

“Jones, straighten your tie,” Marion hissed, just as the door opened.

The elegant butler’s eyes went immediately to the tie, and then to Indy and Marion standing on the doorstep. “May I help you?”

Indy held out the open letter of introduction Ox had given them for just this kind of thing. “Professor Henry Jones Jr and Marion Jones, here to see the Duke of Denver.”

“Yes, of course. Professor Oxley’s cable also arrived. Do come this way.”

As they entered, Marion reached up and gave Indy’s tie a quick twist to get it back in order. She’d heard tales about the Duke -- Lord Peter Wimsey as he’d been – being extraordinarily well-dressed, and she retained just enough memory of her time in England with Colin that she knew Indy’s rumpled clothes wouldn’t make a great impression.

Of course, Indy also had good goddamn reason to look disheveled, considering where they’d just been, but….holy hell, this place was amazing, all polish and gleam and antiques. That was Mayfair, Marion thought.

When she and Indy walked into what was probably considered a morning-room, however, the Duke and Duchess of Denver were standing behind an 18th-century lady’s desk poring over what looked like a blood-stained hat. He was greying and thin, but looked like he knew what he was about; she was younger, warm gold against his silver. Then the Duchess looked up, smiled, and said, “I’m sorry – do I know you, ma’am? You look familiar.”

The Duke took the letter of introduction proffered by the butler, shook it out with an air, and then picked up a monocle and scanned the page. “This is Professor Henry Jones Jr and his wife,” he said to her, and then, charmingly, “Good afternoon. With Oxley’s word behind you… how may I help you?”

But at that moment Marion realized what the Duchess had meant. “Sorry, but, Harriet? It’s Marion. Marion Williams then, Marion Jones now.”

The Duchess was already hurrying over, her hand outstretched. “I thought so! I rather lost track of you—“

“After the war,” Marion said, and shook hands. “It was a complicated time.”

Indy cleared his throat impatiently – he didn’t much like reminders of her past without him, regardless of it being his own damn fault – and said, “Yes, good afternoon. We were wondering if we could take a look at one of your incunabula. Caxton’s edition of the Charlemagne stories?”

“I have two copies,” the Duke said. “Which one do you require?”

“The one with the handwritten notes on the second page,” Indy said. “I don’t know more than that.”

The Duke and Duchess looked at each other. Marion had only known Lady Peter as she had been, or Harriet as she had preferred to be called back then, for a few short weeks in the midst of the war, and her husband had been elsewhere, somewhere secret. It was fascinating to see now the depth of their silent communication, just eye-flickers and a shift of the shoulders. 

“The Dragon cup,” the Duchess said.

“The apocryphal Dragon cup,” the Duke amended.

“The possibly apocryphal Dragon cup that might be the very real one we just pulled out of a crate in the British Museum,” Indy concluded. “But I’d like to check your book to confirm one or two little details.”

His eyes brightening, the Duke rubbed his hands together as if he were a small boy about to tuck into a treat. “To the library it is!. Or rather, if you will be a sportin’ gentleman—“

The Duchess cleared her throat.

“—A sportin’ couple, I mean to say, and let my lady and me come along for the fun, off we’ll go,” the Duke finished.

Indy glanced at Marion. She nodded.

“Happy to, Duke,” he said.

Marion inwardly rolled her eyes at Indy’s aggressively American manners – their difficult time in the museum must have gotten to him – but the Duke and Duchess didn’t seem to care. He appropriated Indy and led the way; she collected Marion.

As they went down that polish-and-gleam hallway, Marion said, “I guess this is a little different than that bomb shelter…”

“Just a bit, perhaps.” This was pragmatically spoken, like the woman Marion had known so briefly. Confirming that resemblance: “And may I call you Marion, rather than Mrs Jones? Since we did spend those hours giving out water and blankets, all those years ago.”

“Sure, Harriet,” Marion said, and they exchanged companionable grins.

In front of them the Duke was prattling on about one of Indy’s scholarly articles, which amazingly enough he seemed to have actually read. Indy was doing his most expressive grunts and an occasional monosyllable in response, which considering the day was all she could hope for. Marion resurrected the manners that had gotten her through a couple of horrible house-parties she had attended with Colin, and said, “How are your children, Harriet?”

“They’re well. You’ll see one of them in the library,” she replied. “And how is your son?”

“On a dig in Turkey. We’ll see him after London. We’re here for a conference, but then Indy got wind of the mysterious cup, and…” Marion shrugged.

Harriet looked intrigued, but at that point they’d reached the library, a vast space filled to the ceiling with books. At a long refectory table in the middle of the space sat a young scholar who looked almost exactly like the newspaper photos Marion had seen of the Duke when he’d been just Lord Peter Wimsey: fair and Mayfair, like a figure out of the 20s rather than 1959, bent assiduously over what looked like a Greek text.

“Roger,” the Duke said, “visitors.”

The young man rose to his feet, one hand still on his book. “Hullo,” he said pleasantly, in a voice like his father’s.

“Professor Henry Jones Jr and Mrs Jones, our second son, Lord Roger Wimsey,” the Duke said. “He’s our bibliophile of the three of ‘em. And he likely is the person to lay hands most swiftly on the Caxton—“

“Not the Charlemagne? With the notes?” Roger said, brow creasing.

Beside Marion, Harriet tensed. Her voice didn’t show it, though: “Something’s wrong, Roger?”

“Er, well, I actually was going to mention it tonight – I happened to do my weekly check of the incunabula an hour ago, but the Romances, the one with the marginal annotations, had been displaced, totally in the wrong case. I reckoned Pater had nicked it for some nefarious detecting purpose, but—“

“Not I,” the Duke said. “Harriet, were you dreaming of Carolingians and sought to relieve your mind by study of an ancient hand? Or felt a little Holy Roman Empire would lend a bit of something to your manuscript in progress?”

“Not I,” Harriet said. “Which suggests either a servant has misplaced the book whilst cleaning, or –“

“Or by the pricking of my thumbs, something thievish this way comes,” the Duke finished. Despite the lightness of his words, Marion didn’t think he looked at all amused. No, he looked… excited.

Indy had the same damn gleam in his eye. “So, okay, what we didn’t mention was that the assistant curator who found the crate with the cup got bashed over the head this morning.”

“Perkins. He’s going to be okay, but there was some blood,” Marion said. “Anyway, before he went to the hospital he told our acquaintance Armand – Armand Culpepper, who consults for the Museum – that ‘the cup was what they wanted.’”

“But you saw the cup,” the Duke said.

Marion knew a properly loving wife wouldn’t mention this, but – “Yeah. He fell into the crate accidentally when we were talking to Armand.”

The Wimseys were too well-bred to laugh out loud. Indy glared anyway. “Marion, you know damn well that there was something on the floor.”

The Duke went still at that, and said, “Something on the floor? Blood?”

“No,” Indy said. “More like sawdust.”

“Hmmm,” the Duke said pensively. “Nasty slippery thing, sawdust. Especially in a nice tidy museum.”

Harriet said to him, “Should you call Bunter, or should I?”

His smile was abstracted, and he moved toward the phone on the desk as if still lost in thought. Before Marion could comment, however, Roger – Lord Roger? these damn English people with their titles – said, “Do you need to inspect the text, Dr Jones, or would it be enough for me to tell you what the notation says?”

“If you know what it says, that would help,” Indy said. “I mean, it’s harder to cross-check any references, but—“

Roger had already bent down to his table, slipping a piece of paper out from under his book and grabbing a stray pencil. (Marion registered the scholar’s use of pencil rather than pen.) He wrote swiftly, without hesitations. 

Harriet looked at Marion. “He’s always had a prodigious memory. He’ll remember it accurately.”

“I just hope it helps,” Marion replied. “I’m not exactly sure what Indy wants with the note.”

“I’ll know it when I hear it,” he said.

The Duke said into the phone, “Bunter? Could you come to the library – and bring Thornton and some fingerprint powder, please. Unobtrusively.” After he hung up, he said meditatively, “I suppose that last instruction was a bit overdone, what with Bunter’s ability to shimmer into a room like smoke—“

“Do stop burbling, Peter, and come and look at this,” Harriet said.

Roger turned the paper around to show them all: flowing script, with a flourish like a dragon’s tail, the words _Three eyes hath the dragon, three drops of blood for each eye. The cup holds them all._

“This doesn’t refer to anything else on the page?” Indy said.

Roger shook his head. “No. The notation appears in one other incunabulum of the period, however.”  
“The _Oldest’s Book_ , which I do _not_ own,” the Duke said. “Printed in London, as I recall. 1487? In any case, an infamous text, said to have disappeared shortly thereafter—“

“And reappeared during James I’s reign. In his library, as it happens, what with his interest in witches and what not,” Roger concluded.

“The cup we saw did have a dragon-motif, with three eyes. But what does ‘three drops of blood’ mean?” Marion said.

“Rubies,” Indy and the Duke said in unison.

Harriet was frowning down at the paper, but looked up at that, and smiled at the Duke. He smiled back, a silent exchange of good feeling.

Marion was warmed by proxy, but she had to say, “There weren’t any rubies in the cup we saw.”

“Maybe it wasn’t the right dragon-cup,” Indy said. “Or maybe it was, and the rubies have been stolen.”

Roger said, “What did Culpepper say when you found the cup?” At his parents’ mingled look, he blushed a little and said, “Right, well, I’ve met him. Culpepper, I mean. He gave a few talks at the Ashmolean when I was up.”

“He seemed a bit antsy, to be honest,” Marion said. “But then he’d just found a nice friendly museum guy bleeding on the threshold.”

At that moment an impeccably dressed older man carrying a small leather bag made an almost noiseless arrival. “You required me, Your Grace?” he said.

“Oh Bunter, there you are. Where’s Thornton?” the Duke said.

“Discussing current staff upheavals with Cook, your Grace. He’ll be along directly,” the man – Bunter, right – said.

Harriet, who’d grown abstracted after her marital exchange with the Duke, looked up again. “Staff upheavals, Bunter?”

“A certain problem with Thomas, your Grace, who seems to have disappeared.”

The Duke said meditatively, “We might not need to dust for fingerprints after all.”

“Thomas is or was our under-cook,” Harriet said to Marion. Then, to them all, “But there’s something else bothering me here, as a matter of plot construction. The Caxton is moved; a curator who’s found a crate is attacked; Culpepper sends you here. That seems…an odd arrangement of events.”

Indy looked thoughtful. “Yeah, something’s not tracking here.”

Marion was thinking furiously. “Do you two know Culpepper? Your son does, but do you?”

“Introduced, I believe, at some society or another,” said the Duke.

Harriet nodded. “Marion, I think I know your direction here. Peter, if we were presented a problem like this, what’s the first thing we’d ask?”

“To participate,” he said. “As we did.”

Indy said, “And would you want to go back to the Museum with us?”

“Yes,” the Duke and Harriet said, without hesitation.

Marion said, “Okay, that would be a great lure. But sending us here also means –“

“That I have you all in one place,” said a new voice from the tall French window on the other side of the library. It was Armand Culpepper, wild-eyed despite all attempts at calm. And, like an idiot, he had a gun trained on them.

“Culpepper, I presume. I rather thought he was the red thread through this,” Harriet said. “Perhaps your stumble found the cup for which he was searching, Professor Jones.”

"Enough!" Culpepper said, desperate.

“And then you took it for safekeeping,” Marion said to Indy, ignoring the idiot villain. “That was stupid and smart at the same time. Because Armand is apparently just no damn good.”

“I feel that several errors in planning have been made,” the Duke said, more in sorrow than in anger –

At which point he and Indy, as if they’d rehearsed it, rushed Armand, whose gun went off, winging a portrait of a man with a horse which hung above the mantel. The three – no, four, with Bunter joining in -- grappled, until another large man entered, equally gun-wielding, and Marion felt her attention was needed there.

She whacked his gun hand with her heavy handbag – which happened to be carrying a small 9th-century stone sculpture Indy was supposed to lecture on tomorrow – and Roger neatly nipped around and got the man off balance enough for a sharp knee to the balls and a nice upper-cut to finish off the bad guy. (She felt this boded well for the otherwise soft-spoken young man's future career.)

Harriet, meanwhile, was on the phone. Marion caught a bit of what she was saying: “…Charles, we’re having a spot of bother. Could you send a few of your finest officers over to Denver House?”

BACK AT THE BAR

After the excitement, Indy had volunteered to show the Duke the cup in question. (Bunter, somewhat worse for wear, had said that he would stay with the police, and Chief Superintendent Charles Parker, who was the Wimseys’ brother-in-law and who'd arrived with the reinforcements, concurred, saying statements could wait.) So the four of them had trooped here to the Joneses’ hotel, and while the men had gone upstairs for inspection and manly noises, Marion and Harriet had stayed in the bar.

They had spoken briefly of those nights long ago, when they had endured the Blitz and separation; Harriet had said, as the wine arrived, “So is your husband now the man you told me about? The one who you said got away?”

“Yes,” Marion had said. For it had been Indy, not Colin, she had been mourning all those years ago. It had always been Indy.

“So journeys end in lovers’ meeting,” Harriet had said, and Marion had said, “And now this journey ends with new friends.” 

“Old friends, perhaps,” Harriet had said, and they’d touched their glasses to honor the moment.

Now, with the four of them comfortably together, Indy slung his arm around Marion’s shoulders. “All serene, honey?”

“All serene, babe,” she said, and took another sip of her Champagne.

Many a slip 'twixt cup and lip, she thought, but sometimes you got there in the end.


End file.
